\u201cWe have steadily increased our spend in technology, now up to $13 billion a year, of which $4 billion goes into strategic growth,\u201d Gopalkrishnan tells Fortune ahead of his one-hour investor day panel discussion with two other Bank of America technologists. \u201cWe leverage across the enterprise, so every dollar you spend gets the maximum bang for the buck, as opposed to sort of being siloed by line of business.\u201d<\/p>\n
That means that when Gopalkrishnan deploys new AI tools and functionality, he will prioritize applications that can scale across all eight lines of business, which includes global capital markets, consumer lending, and retail banking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One example of this in action is Erica, an AI virtual assistant that\u2019s surpassed three billion client interactions since the tool launched in 2018. It now averages more than 58 million interactions per month, facilitating chatbot conversations with clients, proactively altering them on changes to their past spending patterns or flagging when they may have been double-charged by a merchant, and answering banking questions. The tool is currently available on Bank of America\u2019s mobile app, but will expand next year to the desktop.<\/p>\n
In 2020, Bank of America launched Erica for Employees, an internal version of the tool that more than 90% of the company\u2019s global workforce of 213,000 now uses regularly. Erica has helped reduce the number of calls into the company\u2019s IT service desk by 50%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The banking sector has embraced generative AI capabilities at a faster pace than most sectors, with investments focused on AI-enabled chatbots, virtual assistants that can summarize financial documents, fraud monitoring, and assisting employees as they navigate complex international regulatory changes. Generative, predictive, and other forms of AI collectively are projected to generate as much as $340 billion annually<\/a> in value creation for the global banking sector, consulting giant McKinsey<\/a> has estimated.\u00a0<\/p>\n Financial giants, including Goldman Sachs<\/a> and Citigroup<\/a>, have also been steadily rolling out new generative AI tools to more employees throughout 2025.<\/p>\n At Bank of America, Gopalkrishnan says he\u2019s less incentivized to focus his investments on AI tools that can save a couple minutes on simplistic workplace tasks. \u201cWhen you look at the end-to-end client journey, they involve like 40-plus processes and thousands of employees,\u201d says Gopalkrishnan. \u201cYou start to pick apart that process and reimagine it. That\u2019s when you get ROI.\u201d<\/p>\n Bank of America has explored more than 45 different \u201cproof of concept\u201d use cases for generative AI , with 15 of them commercially live today. Some of the priority use cases that Gopalkrishnan is deploying include tools that can summarize or offer search functionality for capital markets and investment banking employees, making it easier to pull real-time market commentary. An in-house built \u201cAskGPS\u201d tool, which was trained on over 3,200 internal documents and presentations, allows employees to ask complex questions on behalf of clients and receive responses within seconds.<\/p>\n Bank of America has also invested $1.5 billion into the company\u2019s data capabilities over the past five years, which Gopalkrishnan says was critical to create a foundation that allowed for more AI adoption.<\/p>\n Within the technology department, Gopalkrishnan has deployed AI coding assistants that are used by 18,000 developers. There has already been a 20% productivity lift to select parts of the development life cycle that Bank of America has focused its efforts on.<\/p>\n Gopalkrishnan says he\u2019s mostly leaning on one unnamed vendor to support AI-enabled code assistance, but is continuing to explore other tools on a smaller scale. His intent is to standardize the application of these AI coding tools over time to as few vendors as possible.<\/p>\n More than 130,000 Bank of America employees are currently authorized to use the enterprise productivity tools and by the end of the year, everyone will have access to them. Bank of America has sought to motivate its workforce by offering AI learning programs that begin by teaching the basics of AI, but also more advanced prompt engineering training.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really a combination of training, education, giving them exposure to the tools, and then ongoing commitment to reskill, as the work changes,\u201d says Gopalkrishnan.<\/p>\n John Kell<\/strong><\/p>\n Send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0CIO Intelligence here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n NEWS PACKETS<\/p>\n Tech earnings highlight cracks in AI\u2019s valuation halo. <\/b>Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon have all spent billions to support their AI initiatives\u2014and all four told investors last week that they will increase spending even more<\/a> in 2026. Investors have consistently supported the AI boom over the past few years, though that enthusiasm showed some notable cracks in the latest earnings season, as Microsoft and Meta Platforms both saw their stocks fall<\/a> amid concerns for the lofty levels of spending needed to support their AI ambitions. What\u2019s vexing investors is: AI is generating billions of dollars in revenue and bottom-line efficiencies, but exactly how much, at what pace, and at what price? That investment thesis still needs time to marinate as these tech giants have added debt<\/a> to support their AI spending.<\/p>\n OpenAI strikes a big compute deal with Amazon; projects massive revenue growth. <\/b>On Monday, OpenAI inked a deal<\/a> to buy $38 billion worth of compute from Amazon and will immediately start to access Nvidia\u2019s graphics processing units. The partnership is notable as it is one of OpenAI\u2019s first big moves away from Microsoft, who the AI startup had an exclusive cloud agreement with up until this year. Separately, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indicated<\/a> more bullish expectations for revenue growth, sharing that annual revenue is \u201cwell more\u201d than reports of $13 billion a year. When asked by the Bg2 Pod about revenue estimates exceeding $100 billion a year by 2028 or 2029, Altman responded: \u201cHow about \u201827?\u201d<\/p>\n Nvidia makes history as the first-ever company worth $5 trillion. <\/b>Last week, AI chipmaker Nvidia officially became the world\u2019s first company to achieve a market capitalization north of $5 trillion<\/a>, pulling ahead of tech rivals like Microsoft and Apple, who are each worth close to $4 trillion. The latest stock market gains came after Nvidia\u2019s GTC developer conference, where CEO Jensen Huang disclosed that the company had secured more than $500 billion in orders<\/a> for its AI chips through the end of next year. Major new deals that have been unveiled the past several days have included partnerships with Eli Lilly<\/a>, Uber Technologies<\/a>, and Johnson & Johnson<\/a>. Bloomberg reports<\/a> that Nvidia is now larger than six of the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 index and the entire value of equity markets of most countries.<\/p>\n Hiring spree: AI companies are seeking more \u201cforward-deployed engineers.\u201d<\/b> This year, job advertisements have been soaring<\/a> for a new specialist software developer who can write code, but also is adept at talking to customers. By hiring more forward-deployed engineers, AI hyperscalers like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cohere would aim to make their AI models more specialized and useful for companies, thus generating bigger contracts and more revenue. The Financial Times reports that job advertisements for these roles have increased more than 800% between January and September of 2025, citing data from the jobs platform Indeed.<\/p>\n ADOPTION CURVE<\/p>\n Firms that prioritize AI governance are also generating stronger returns from their investments.<\/b> A recent EY survey<\/a> of 975 C-suite leaders across 21 countries found that while nearly every company had already suffered financial losses from AI-related incidents\u2014with average damages \u201cconservatively\u201d exceeding $4.4 million\u2014the enterprises that had stronger governance measures like real-time monitoring and oversight committees were seeing far fewer damages. And notably, those organizations are also seeing stronger returns from their AI investments: 34% more likely to see improvements in revenue growth and 65% more likely to produce cost savings.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I look at that data, what it tells me is that those companies are taking AI more seriously,\u201d says Joe Depa, EY\u2019s global chief innovation officer. \u201cThat means they\u2019re likely training and talking about how to leverage AI, both ethically, but also from a productivity standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n The survey also found that members of the C-suite may still be struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of change as AI technologies advance. On average, when asked to identify the appropriate controls against five AI-related risks, including hallucinations and bias, only 12% of the C-suite respondents answered correctly. CTOs and CIOs did the best (26% and 24%, respectively), while chief operating officers (6%) and chief marketing officers (3%) were at the bottom of the list.<\/p>\n Courtesy of EY\n<\/p>\n JOBS RADAR<\/p>\n Hiring:<\/strong><\/p>\n – Boundless Network <\/b>is seeking a CTO<\/a>. Posted salary range: $336K-$402K\/year.<\/p>\n – Minnetronix Medical <\/b>is seeking a VP of IT<\/a>, based in St. Paul Park, Minnesota. Posted salary range: $230K-$300K\/year.<\/p>\n – The University of Massachusetts Boston <\/b>is seeking a CIO<\/a>, based in the greater Boston area. Posted salary range: $225K-$250K\/year.<\/p>\n – Bush and Bush Law Group <\/b>is seeking a CTO<\/a>, based in Dallas. Posted salary range: $100K-$150K\/year.<\/p>\n Hired:<\/strong><\/p>\n – Valvoline <\/b>announced<\/a> the appointment of Hitesh Patel as chief technology and cybersecurity officer, effective immediately. Prior to joining the retail automotive services company, Patel served as SVP and CIO of bedding manufacturer Sleep Number. He also held technology leadership roles for retailers Advance Auto Parts and Best Buy.<\/p>\n – Ronald McDonald House<\/b> appointed<\/a> Jarrod Bell as CIO, joining the family focused nonprofit to advance a digital transformation and enhance cybersecurity. Bell previously served as a managing consultant at Yates and as CTO at the nonprofit Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. He also previously served as a CIO of the San Francisco Opera.<\/p>\n – Cabinetworks Group <\/b>has promoted<\/a> Erik Wille to serve as the cabinet manufacturer\u2019s CTO, after assuming the role on an interim basis earlier this year. Wille initially joined Cabinetworks as SVP and CISO in 2023 and led various initiatives, including rebuilding the company\u2019s information security management system and launching a new security awareness program. He previously held leadership roles at American Axle & Manufacturing and Penske Automotive Group.<\/p>\n – Teradata <\/b>has promoted<\/a> Josh Fecteau to serve as the software company\u2019s chief data and AI officer. Fecteau first joined Teradata in 2019 as a senior director of strategy and solutions architecture. He also held leadership roles at data storage company EMC, which Dell acquired in 2016, and has advised CIOs as a consultant.<\/p>\n – Transflo <\/b>named<\/a> Jay Tomasello as CTO, joining the transportation-focused software provider after most recently serving as CIO at ground transportation services provider Forward Air. Prior to that, he spent more than nine years at shipping giant FedEx, where Tomasello served as CIO and VP of IT at FedEx Supply Chain.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/EY-RAI-Pulse-Survey-Wave-2_Figure-2.png\"\/)
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